I FInally Bought One - OCZ Vertex 2 64GB SSD

[Nibiru2012]

Well Gang! I finally succumbed to temptation and bought one today.

OCZ Vertex 2 64GB SSD for $99.99 at Newegg after rebate and with free shipping!

Price is good through 1-31-2011

OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550

This is the OCZ unit that gets rave reviews and very high marks!

4k Random Write (Aligned): 50,000 IOPS
Seek Time: 0.1 MS
TRIM (requires OS support)
ECC: 27 bytes of redundancy per 512 bytes data. Up to twelve 9-bit symbols correctable
Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Re-porting Technology
Sequential Access - Read up to 285MB/s
Sequential Access - Write up to 275MB/s
MTBF 2,000,000 hours
Manufacturer Warranty: Parts 3 years limited Labor 3 years limited

 

[Ian]

That's a good price! It's almost the same price in pounds over here - so about 1.5 times the price.

Are you going to use this as your boot drive and the stick most other things on your Samsung SATA?

I've been tempted by SSD's for a long time, but I'm holding off upgrading my system for another year or two - so I'm going to have to wait .

 

[Nibiru2012]

Yes Ian, I plan to use it as my boot drive and have the 500GB Samsung for Paging Files and other stuff. That one Samsung has a Read rate of 135Mbps and a Write rate of 130 Mbps, so it's a fast little puppy for a hard drive.

I always used a 64 GB partition on the hard drive for my OS and boot anyway, so this won't be much of a change size wise for me,

So now internally in the mid-size tower I'll have the OCZ SSD and the Samsung 500GB hard drive. Then in the Sans Digital Mobilstor JBOD external case I have the one Samsung 500GB I'll move to it in addition to the 1TB Samsung already there. I 'll take the 500GB Western Digital and either sell it on eBay or Craigslist.

 

[Mychael]

That seems to me a great price for an SSD. Keep us posted as to how it goes.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I sure will, I'll post the ATTO Disk Benchmark scores and some others too, plus the WEI score.

That price is the best I've seen yet for the OCZ Vertex 2 64GB unit. Even better than what was advertised for "Black Friday" after the U.S. Thanksgiving Day.

 

[Nibiru2012]

Well, I got the drive today. Windows 7 is installed with SP1.

At first I was having some issues with the POST boot showing "Smart enable failed".

Did some research at the OCZ website and found out it was certain Gigabyte motherboards were the problem. So Gigabyte did a special BIOS firmware update just for the OCZ SSD drives.

Interesting in the fact that only the German Gigabyte website had the BIOS firmware updates though, not on the Taiwan or US websites. :dontknow:

Firmware went from version F12 to F13e.

Hard drive score went from WEI of 5.9 to 7.7! Woohoo! Now the lowest score is the CPU at 6.5 WEI.


Following is the ATTO Disk Benchmark for the Samsung HD502HJ hard drive:

Still this Samsung hard drive kicks butt for a spinner hard drive though! :top:

Now here is the ATTO Disk Benchmark score for the OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD:

NOW this is ROCKING! Benchmark nearly the same as what's listed on OCZ's website! Vertex 2 FTW! :rock: Woohoo! :vroam::marchmellow::ridinghorse:

The ATTO Disk Benchmark tool is what OCZ uses to rate their drives so I am a HAPPY CAMPER!

 

[draceena]

I am officially insanely jealous, congrats!

 

[yodap]

Nice nibs, and here's an attaboy :beer: for figuring out the problem.
I'm jealous too!

 

[Nibiru2012]

Nice nibs, and here's an attaboy :beer: for figuring out the problem.
I'm jealous too!

Thanks to both draceena and yodap!

Thanks also goes out to OCZ and their forum. It is very useful and the Admins are extremely knowledgeable and helpful. Plus they gave the hotlinks for the various Gigabyte motherboards and associated firmware updates for the BIOS. It was almost "easy peasy, lemon squeezy" ! I didn't have to contact an Admin though, I used BING since I was in IE8 and two click later I reading about the issues. A few clicks later I found the post in the forum thread with the links to the website for the BIOS firmware updates.

I really am glad I made the leap to SSD. Programs open lightning quick, computer starts really fast, very responsive and snappy. I really couldn't pass up the great price that was offered. I had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Newegg would do something such as killer pricing after the first of the year. I just figured it would be later in the Spring.

 

[Nibiru2012]

Here's an interesting benchmarking tool from OCZ called: OCZ Winsat 2.

It runs in the "cmd" window. The results are below.

C:\>winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 4096
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransiz
e 4096'
> Run Time 00:00:00.28
> Disk Random 4.0 Read 101.61 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.06

C:\>winsat disk -ran -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 4096
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransi
ze 4096'
> Run Time 00:00:00.31
> Disk Random 4.0 Write 119.76 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.08

C:\>winsat disk -seq -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -seqsize 524288
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -seqsiz
e 524288'
> Run Time 00:00:06.19
> Disk Sequential 512.0 Read 254.79 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:06.99

C:\>winsat disk -seq -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -seqsize 524288
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -seqsi
ze 524288'
> Run Time 00:00:00.80
> Disk Sequential 512.0 Write 261.10 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.56

C:\>winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 16384
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransiz
e 16384'
> Run Time 00:00:00.28
> Disk Random 16.0 Read 219.77 MB/s 7.9
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.04

C:\>winsat disk -ran -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 16384
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransi
ze 16384'
> Run Time 00:00:00.31
> Disk Random 16.0 Write 228.84 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:01.06

C:\>winsat disk -flush -drive c
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-flush -drive c -seq'
> Run Time 00:00:00.78
> Running: Storage Assessment '-flush -drive c -ran'
> Run Time 00:00:00.75
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 0.336 ms 7.9
> Latency: 95th Percentile 1.380 ms 7.9
> Latency: Maximum 34.506 ms 7.9
> Average Read Time with Random Writes 0.292 ms 7.9
> Total Run Time 00:00:02.28

C:\>Pause
Press any key to continue . . .

This almost makes for better reading than the proverbial copy of Reader's Digest in the bathroom!

 

[catilley1092]

Now if only the larger SSD's, around the 128GB ones, would follow suit. I looked them up, and most are well over $200, some as high as $360. I guess in time, these will reduce in price as well.

60GB is perfectly fine, unless you're dualbooting between OS's. While today's standards in mechanical drives are headed towards TB's, rather than GB's, 128GB is a ton of space. Many of these 1TB drives on a home computer doesn't come close to being filled, as I have a total of 14 OS's (2 partitions, with 12 VM's), and my 1TB drive is only one third filled.

On my notebook that has a 100GB (93GB usable) drive, I was quad booting, and had one VM installed. So I have no doubt that a 128GB drive will meet my needs.

Nibs, I hope you enjoy your purchase, I know that you've waited a long time for it.

Cat

 

[Nibiru2012]

I did a clean install today. I had the OS installed when I did the BIOS update and it was a little quirky or buggy.

I did a secure erase of the SSD and then reinstalled Windows 7 Pro x64.

My ATTO Disk Benchmark score improved! Not a great deal but noticeable.

This was the previous test done three days ago:

 

[catilley1092]

I most certainly will buy one, probably not for this PC, but for my next notebook. Honestly, other than needed accessories (mouse, keyboard, RAM, etc), I don't want to spend any more money on this one. The SSD won't bring up my WEI score up a bit, as my Aero graphics is a 3.0, and that's my final score. It may render web pages faster, but that's it.

A more powerful system would probably benefit from a quality SSD, and hopefully within a few months of purchasing my next notebook, I can get one. But only a recent one, not a leftover first generation one. For my needs, still at least a 128GB one will be necessary. I expect the next version of Windows to be out within a couple of years (the beta/RC sooner), and want the largest one that I can afford, to dual boot between the two.

Linux will run just fine from the eSATA or USB 3.0 ports (I won't buy one w/o at least one of each), I can put the original drive in a case for that purpose.

Cat

 

[Nibiru2012]

This is an update regarding my SSD I bought a few months ago.

I had started to experience BSODs on a 2-4 times a week basis and couldn't for the life of me figure what the heck was going on. It was very frustrating to say the least!

In the beginning I had to install a special BIOS firmware update for my Gigabyte motherboard that was labeled: vF13e. It was/is a beta firmware written exclusively so the motherboard would recognize the SSD correctly.

I had installed the latest firmware update for the Vertex 2 which is v1.33 a few weeks back. So in my experimentation a couple of weeks ago, I decided to see if going back to the motherboard BIOS firmware vF12 (latest stable release) would make any difference now. I changed the BIOS on the mobo back to vF12 and rebooted. The system stayed fairly stable for several days with no BSOD and the drive was being fully recognized now too. OCZ must have tweaked their firmware for the SSD, but never mentioned it in the release information regarding the SSD and the Gigabyte motherboard issues. Last weekend I had another BSOD while listening to streaming audio on AIMP2 media player.

I decided then to do a complete clean reinstall of Windows 7 Professional and also doing a secure wipe of the SSD using the Diskpart feature of the install DVD where 0's are written to the drive taking the SSD back to a pristine like-new state. After installing all the chipset drivers and Intel RST driver in the correct sequence and then using SSD Tweaker software I decided to start hammering the setup.

The system is VERY stable now, no BSODs in a week's time and ATTO benchmarks look super! Also running the trial version of SSDLife Pro software SSD analyzer shows a life expectancy of over 9 years!

So it looks as if I did the correct thing in restoring the official Gigabyte BIOS firmware back to the motherboard. The vF13e was a BETA so I knew initially that it may have been a little buggy to start with.

The system is running the best it has since I bought the drive. After several BSODs I got a little discouraged and wondered if I did the right thing or not, now I know it was just a matter of changing the mobo's BIOS along with the latest firmware for the SSD from OCZ.

In addition I am now using the latest version of Raxco's PerfectDisk defrag software, version 12 which is now enhanced specifically for use with SSD drives.

​

PerfectDisk is, in my humble opinion, the absolute best defrag application available! I highly recommend it to anyone regardless of whether they have an SSD or a spinner hard drive.


​

 

[Nibiru2012]

Another note of interest, I have moved my Page File to the SSD now, since it's recommended that the file be at the same speed as the hard drive. In addition, I reduced the Page File size to 1 GB total since I have 6 GB of total RAM. No problems whatsoever and since the Page File consists of mostly reads there is no harm done. Most ubergeeks are recommending keeping the file on the SSD.